Hildebrandt et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,786,081 B1, discloses direct and/or opposing flow path refrigeration, and Hildebrandt et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,043,968 B1, discloses a directly refrigerated block. The devices of these patents can be beneficially employed in ASTM D 4684 type testing. See also, Selby et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,503,002 A1; Hildebrandt, U.S. Pat. No. 6,755,044 B1; and Hildebrandt et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/929,898. Note, U.S. Pat. No. 5,167,275 A1 to Stokes et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,306,658 B1 to Turner et al.
Such art, however, is not without shortcoming, especially in light of desires to provide data with higher accuracy, precision and uniformity, ever more quickly, in the demanding and rapidly evolving field of oil testing. This applies, in particular, to cell-to-cell temperature control in directly refrigerated blocks employed in instrumentation for MRV/TP-1 type gang testing.